Nonfiction
The Right to Privacy
By Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy. Knopf. 405 pp. $26.95.
Many years ago Judge Louis D. Brandeis defined the right to privacy as "the right to be let alone." While his summation was "eloquent in its simplicity," the authors of this useful and alarming survey note that legally "it offers no guidance at all." Indeed, because privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution, the extent to which we have a right to be let alone is open to a variety of interpretations. While a welter of state and federal statutes and judicial decisions do recognize some kinds of personal privacy as protected behavior, many other elements of our lives are not protected at all. A growing number of organizations and authorities, from our employers to the federal government, are increasingly and insistently invading our private lives and arguing that they have a right or obligation to do so. In response, more and more individuals are suing.
"The Right to Privacy" is a report from the battlefront. The authors, both attorneys, use recent cases and court rulings to evaluate the current state of privacy, to describe where our rights end. They consider such areas as privacy and law enforcement (under what circumstances, for instance, do police have the right to conduct a strip search?), privacy and the self (the question of privacy is, as they remind us, at the heart of the legal battles over abortion rights), privacy versus the press's right to know (how much, and under what circumstances, can the press reveal about a private individual?) and personal privacy and employers (under what circumstances can an employer be justified in asking, say, whether or not we believe in God, or what our sexual orientation is?). The authors' description of cases and rulings are models of clarity, often quite gripping. The conclusion that emerges from their careful exploration is that we are witnessing a "general erosion of privacy." Given that fact, the book is a helpful, even necessary, guide to the extent to which we can expect to be let alone, and a warning about the ways in which our right to privacy is almost constantly under assault.
James Thurber
HIS LIFE AND TIMES
By Harrison Kinney. Henry Holt. 1238 pp. $40.
It's impossible to read this massive biography of James Thurber without speculating on what its subject might have to say about it. That it would be the inspiration for a typically Thurberesque self-parody seems likely. That Thurber, a profoundly shy man who, in one of the many paradoxes that defined him, loved attention, would have been quietly pleased and fascinated by this exhaustive record of his life and career also seems clear.
Harrison Kinney first met Thurber in 1948, when the bemused author, upon being informed that he was the subject of Mr. Kinney's master's thesis for Columbia University, suggested that they talk. Mr. Kinney went on to interview many of Thurber's close friends and acquaintances and to read, seemingly, everything written either by Thurber or about him It is no small praise to say that Mr. Kinney makes a very good case for the need for a biography of this length (1,077 pages of text).
James Thurber was the preeminent literary comedian of America in mid century. Twenty-six volumes of his antic, wry stories and drawings are available, and although Thurber died in 1961, his work continues to find new admirers. In the 1930s and 1940s Thurber was at the center of a remarkable group of writers and editors. His long relationship with The New Yorker helped to secure that magazine's unique popularity. And Thurber himself, an inspired mimic, disciplined craftsman, prodigious drinker and a man who battled a series of devastating physical maladies (he was legally blind for the last two decades of his life), is sufficiently fascinating to support a lengthy narrative.
Nonetheless, the book is so long and detailed in its recitation of even the smallest aspects of his career that it will primarily be of interest to devoted fans of Thurber's work. For them, of course, no work about Thurber could seem too detailed. Mr. Kinney has uncovered so much about Thurber's life (he was notoriously unreliable in his own recollections about his career and the genesis of his work) that this book is likely to be the definitive source on the man, the quarry from which any future writers will draw their material. Like all of the best literary biographies, "James Thurber" sends us back to the subject's work with a renewed curiosity and appreciation.
